Wednesday, November 12, 2014

AN OPEN LETTER TO SHIVRAJ SINGH CHAVAN

I am
writing this only to convey to you the anguish of a large number of people and
that of mine at the insensitiveness of your government. How could a responsible
administration with hordes of bright bureaucrats could not think twice before
conducting an hour-long session of fireworks from various sites around the
Upper Lake the other day for which an unseemly crowd of a lakh or so had been
asked to collect on the VIP Road? As if the Lake is not polluted enough; as if
all the drains discharging pollutants into it have been plugged; as if the
motorised boats plying on it have not been polluting it already; as if
thousands who collect for the so-called “Raahgiri” days heaping litter on to
the Lake were not enough that you had to go and shower enormous amounts of
carbon on its waters. The Diwali fireworks this year had been prolonged and the
government need not have indulged in another spell of fireworks in this ‘grand’
scale so soon spending massive amounts of public money, unless it was meant for
mere self-promotion.

It was a kind of
height of irony. Your own government had engaged CEPT in 2011 for recommending
measures for conservation of the Upper Lake, the report of which has not been
(deliberately?) worked upon yet. And, here was the same government going about
polluting the Lake by its own indiscreet action. For God’s, sake, don’t you
know that we use its waters for drinking purposes? With the heavy metals
released from the immersed effigies of gods and goddesses, the waters are not
what one could call potable, the Corporation’s treatment being hardly
effective. And instead of improving the quality of water you take steps to
needlessly pollute it more with loads of carbon.

You must have
blown a crore of rupees, if not more, on the fireworks. Last year, as much as 5
crores were spent on “Jheel Mahotsav” but not a pie was spent for its
conservation. The government refrain before the National Green Tribunal has
been that for want of money its directions could not be acted upon. The heavily
silted Lake bed needs to be de-silted but the government has no money for
either buying or hiring a dredger. But there is enough to be blown up on activities
harmful for the Lake. It is being exploited to the hilt only to degrade it
every day by the thoughtless actions of your government. The Sports Authority
of India and the Sair Sapata have already forced the birds to quit their
traditional roosting place and damage the Lake’s ecosystem. Now your government
is ensuring unmitigated harm to its waters.

We, who feel for the Lake, agree with the
three university researchers who had said last year that by the end of this
century the Lake wouldn’t exist as we know it because of the way it is being
degraded and allowed to decay. We, however, now feel that this may happen much
sooner than that because, given the way your government is hell-bent in destroying
it, the Lake will remain a couple of decades from now only as a shrunk and
shrivelled small spread of filthy water, unfit for human consumption. A millennium
old inheritance is going to be lost to posterity, thanks to your government’s
uncaring and mindless actions.

Lastly, a city
which is starving for basic civic amenities, where roads are in a shambles,
where sewer and water pipelines constantly leak or overflow, where garbage
piles up without being cleared and where the landfill in Khanti is burning
polluting the environs rendering several people sick your government, according
to us, had no business in staging this expensive show. These are only opiates it
is trying to administer to the people to make them forget their otherwise miserable
quality of life. Remember, people are not fools. They can and will see through
these ploys.

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About Me

There would seem to be no point in talking about the position I used to hold. What is more relevant today is that I am retired from the service of government of India where I worked for thirty four years in senior positions ending just below the top of my department. I retired more than twenty years ago. To be fruitfully engaged I took to blogging and writing articles, initially, on local issues but now for years I have been writing on topical and environmental matters. The writings in the local supplement of a national daily gave me some kind of a positive identity in the town which culminated in my being nominated to be a founder member of Bhopal Citizens' Forum, a powerful pressure group. I am , I think, fruitfully engaged and I have no complaints against life.